Fathers, brothers and friends in Cambridgeshire are uniting this month to ‘grow, move and host’ for men’s health movement, Movember.

This year’s campaign is encouraging both men and women to sign up. Men can grow a moustache, and anyone can raise funds for men’s health by being active or either throwing or going to a Movember event to raise funds for men’s health to help stop them dying too young.

Statistics from the Movember Foundation – which raises money for projects focusing on prostate cancer, testicular cancer and suicide prevention – show, on average, men die four years younger than women in the UK.

Movember supporter Derek Ford, 64, of Bar Hill, was alarmed to find a painful lump in one of his testicles nearly three years ago, and thinking it was testicular cancer went to see his GP.

But while he was relieved to find the lump was just a cyst, doctors found his prostate was massively inflamed, which meant he could not urinate. His worst fears were confirmed when he was then diagnosed with prostate cancer.

“With the lump, I was in excruciating pain,” he said. “If I hadn’t had the lump, I wouldn’t have known I had a prostate problem.

Read More

“He [the consultant] told me what type it was, and said ‘this is unlikely to kill you. You’re likely to die with it rather than because of it. It doesn’t require any treatment; it’s just something that needs keeping an eye on’.”

Just a few weeks later, Mr Ford had part of his prostate removed in a procedure at Nuffield Hospital, Cambridge, and has been “right as rain” ever since. He is now just being monitored with six monthly appointments.

Men will be sporting facial hair during Movember.

The father of three, who works as a management consultant for the Institute for Manufacturing at Cambridge University, said:“If men can’t pee or have lumps, go and see the doctor,” he said. “There’s a reason for it. It’s not because you’re getting old.”

More than 10,500 men with prostate cancer will die in the UK this year – the most commonly diagnosed cancer among males.

And testicular cancer is the most common cancer in men aged 25-49, with 2,300 new cases in the UK in 2013.